Now Ye're Talking - To A Merchant Navy Officer

I'm A Merchant Navy Officer AMA

Dietmar Hamann wrote: »

Thanks for taking the time to do this AMA. I've been glued to it since it started as my Grandad was an Engineer on Merchant ships back in the day.

Are there any ports around the world where you would need to do some simulator runs before going there due to the size of the ship being larger than the normal one that would dock there?

Also do you ever end up having to open up a container mid journey due to issues you or your crew notice once loaded and at sea? If you have have you ever found anything interesting?

No not really. I'm sure ferries on the same routes going to the same ports would do simulator work on those ports. my ships aren't anything special size wise so we'd be pretty bog standard. Very large cruise ships would do risk assessments If they were entering a port not really designed for their size.

I work on tankers so we don't have any containers. When I was a cadet I was on a container ship carrying a tank container of rum back from the carribean. I think it was concentrated because the tank cracked and it leaked onto the deck and stripped the paint off. When we first saw the rum leak we were all excited (free booze ) but when it took the paint off we didn't sample it.

Dav

I think we might wrap this up there after an extended and really fun AMA. Thank you so much to our Merchant Naval Officer for all his time, expertise and tales from the 7 seas